Key Points
- The 2022 annual meeting of the STM was held virtually May 1–4.
- A special focused ultrasound symposium included research on immunotherapy, imaging, drug delivery, hyperthermia, pancreatic therapy, prostate cancer, and canine solid tumor treatment.
The 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Thermal Medicine (STM) was held virtually May 1–4. With an interactive, real-time format, STM members were able to engage with the speakers during the sessions after viewing recorded presentations.
“The keynote presentations were both excellent,” said the Foundation’s Research Director for Applied Physics, Frédéric Padilla, PhD. A physician from Children’s National, Catherine Bollard, MBChB, MD, FRACP, FRCPA, gave a fantastic talk on “Advancing Cell Therapies for Cancer.” The other keynote, “Icescapades – Clinical and Translation Applications of Cryoablation” by Alda Tam, MD, MBA, FRCPC, FSIR, would also be of interest to the focused ultrasound community, because cryoablation researchers are also exploring combination therapies. In fact, clinical trials are already underway combining cryotherapy and immunotherapy.”
A special focused ultrasound symposium led by Chris Diederich, PhD, and Allison Payne, PhD, included six abstract presentations and presentations by three invited speakers. The invited presentation topics included immunotherapy, imaging biomarkers, and hyperthermia-mediate drug delivery. The focused ultrasound abstracts covered volumetric hyperthermia; treatment planning, monitoring, and evaluation; pancreatic tissue properties and pancreatic thermal therapy, prostate cancer, and canine solid tumor treatment. Neuro-oncology and immunotherapy sessions also included presentations featuring focused ultrasound.
Focused Ultrasound Symposium – Advances in Therapeutic Ultrasound
Chair(s): Chris Diederich, PhD, and Allison Payne, PhD
Panel discussion with three invited speakers:
- Optimization of combined focal and immunotherapy protocols by James Wang, Brett Z. Fite, Aris J. Kare, Bo Wu, Marina Raie, Spencer K. Tumbale, and Katherine K. Ferrara from Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA.
- Imaging biomarkers for magnetic resonance guided focused ultrasound thermal therapies by Allison Payne, Sara Johnson, Blake Zimmerman, Rachel Factor, Jill Shea, Nicole Winkler, Henrik Odéen, and Sarang Joshi from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
- MR-HIFU hyperthermia-mediated drug delivery by Lukas Sebeke from the University Hospital of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Abstracts:
- Feasibility of volumetric hyperthermia using the InSightec ExAblate body array system by Kisoo Kim, Muhammad Zubair, Chris Diederich, and Eugene Ozhinsky from the University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
- Treatment planning, monitoring, and evaluation in MR-HIFU: Agreement between planned ablation volume, thermal dose, and treatment-induced shutdown of vascular perfusion by Reshma Modi(1), Caitlin Tydings(2), Ari Partanen(3), Haydar Celik(1), Aerang Kim(2), Matthew Oetgen(4), Karun Sharma(1,5), and Pavel Yarmolenko(1) from 1: Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation, Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA; 2: Oncology, Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA; 3: Profound Medical Corporation, Mississauga, ON, Canada; 4: Orthopedics, Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA; and 5: Radiology, Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA.
- Ultrasonic properties of human pancreatic tissues by Michael Gray, Laura Spiers, and Constantin Coussios from University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
- SITA Winner – Deployable ultrasound applicators for MR-guided thermal therapy of pancreatic tumors by Muhammad Zubair, Mathew S. Adams, Peter Jones, Mitchell Wong, Kisoo Kim, Eugene Ozhinsky, and Chris J. Diederich from the University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
- SITA Winner – Treatment modeling and planning strategies for clinical interstitial ultrasound thermal ablation of focal prostate cancer by Pragya Gupta(1), Tamas Heffter(2), Muhammad Zubair(1), I-Chow Hsu(1), E. Clif Burdette(2), and Chris J. Diederich (1) from 1: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; and 2: Acoustic MedSystems Inc., Savoy, IL, USA.
- Therapeutic efficacy and anti-tumor immune effects of focused ultrasound in canine patients with spontaneously occurring solid tumors by Harshini Ashar(1), Akansha Singh(1), Deepan Kishore(2), Tina Neel(2), Sunil More(1), Danielle Dugat(1), Ashish Ranjan(1) from 1: College of Veterinary Medicine, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA; and 2: Neel Veterinary Hospital, Oklahoma City, OK, USA.
Neuro-oncology Session:
The session had a presentation on radiosensitization via focused ultrasound—induced mild hyperthermia:
- Radiosensitization of C6 glioma tumors with focused ultrasound-induced mild hyperthermia by Zhiyuan Xu(1), David Schlesinger(1), Robert Andrew Drainville(2), David Moore(3), Patcharin Pramoonjago(4), Jason Sheehan(1), and Frederic Padilla(3,5) from 1: the Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA; 2: LabTAU, INSERM, Centre Léon Bérard, Université Lyon 1, Univ Lyon, Lyon, France; 3: Focused Ultrasound Foundation, Charlottesville, VA, USA; 4: Department of Pathology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA; 5: Department of Radiology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
The focus of the neuro-oncology session was on thermal ablation of brain tumors using Laser Interstitial Thermal Therapy (LITT). Several researchers reported that blood-brain barrier disruption following LITT may improve adjuvant chemotherapy permeability, and one presentation reported positive results from a phase II study combining LITT with immunotherapy (pembrolizumab).